Tag Archives | Jakarta

A recent analysis of carbon-dating by the Miami-based Beta Analytic Lab has apparently validated findings by a government-sanctioned team that a man-made structure, buried under Mount Padang in Cianjur, West Java, is older than the Giza pyramid.

Carbon-dating test results from the Miami lab show that the structure could date back to 14,000 BC or beyond.

The lab used samples of sand, soil and charcoal found at a depth of between three and 12 meters beneath the mountain’s surface.

The Giza pyramids were constructed around 2,500 BC.

“The analysis of the Miami lab dismisses doubts over an earlier test conducted by the National Nuclear Agency [Batan]. There is no more doubt that the structure beneath Mount Padang is older than the Giza pyramid,” geologist and member of the Mount Padang research team Budianto Ontowirjo said on Sunday.

An Indonesian woman exhales cigarette smoke into the mouth of a gaunt, naked patient at a Jakarta clinic, where tobacco is openly touted as a cancer cure.

The Western patient is suffering from emphysema, a condition she developed from decades of smoking. Along with cancer and autism, it’s just one of the ailments the Griya Balur clinic claims it can cure with cigarettes.

“I missed this,” says the woman, a regular customer, with an American accent, as Phil Collins?s “I Can Feel It” blares in the background.

Griya Balur would be shut down in many parts of the world, but not in Indonesia, one of the developing-country new frontiers for big tobacco as it seeks to replace its dwindling profits in the health-conscious West.

Long traditions of tobacco use combined with poor regulation and the billions of dollars that flow into government coffers from the tobacco industry mean places like Griya Balur go unchallenged.

President Barack Obama spent four years of his childhood life living in Indonesia. He attended Primary School 1 in the Menteng district of Jakarta, where they referred to him as Barry.

Much of Indonesia still think of Obama as that ambitious child who someday wanted to be a president. Moved from the Menteng park to Primary School 1, there stands a seven foot statue of Obama as a 10-year old boy holding a butterfly.

His success has been materialized throughout Jakarta as an inspiration. Screenings have begun in Jakata of the new film Obama The Menteng Kid, due to be released on July 1.

The film is based on a book which explores a fictionalised portrayal of President Obama’s life from 1967 to 1971 when he was living in Indonesia. Obama is portrayed by Hasan Farooq Ali, 14, who told the BBC how the film helped him to learn “a lot about tolerance and how to accept people’s differences.” When asked about the removal of scenes where President Obama recites the Koran, producer Raam Punjabi told BBC: